Eliza Diaconescu, 73, of Lake Forest, is scheduled to appear for arraignment Monday in federal court in Chicago.
She is charged with one count of health care fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago said the charge was brought by that office’s Opioid Task Force, which was formed in 2019 to combat misuse and trafficking of the painkiller medicine.A criminal information filled Thursday alleged that between 2016 and 2021, Diaconescu presigned blank prescriptions for hydrocodone, oxycodone and fentanyl for patients at her pain clinic in Gurnee. The presigned forms allowed the doctor to provide prescriptions while she was not at the clinic, authorities said.
The patients picked up the prescriptions from other workers at the clinic without having a contemporaneous examination from Diaconescu, authorities charged. She then knowingly submitted false claims seeking reimbursement from Medicare for the purported visits, officials said. Diaconescu and her staff created false paperwork indicating she had face-to-face meetings with patients, when in fact, the patients had come only to pick up the presigned prescriptions, according to charging documents.
According to the Illinois Department of Professional and Financial Regulation website, Diaconescu’s license to practice medicine was suspended in July 2021.
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